Novell and Microsoft recently entered into an agreement regarding software patents (really?) that betrays the rest of the Free Software community, including the very people who wrote Novell's own system, for Novell's sole financial beneift, according to Bruce Perens. Join Perens in signing an open letter to Novell's CEO Ron Hovsepian. "As the agreement stands today, it betrays the authors of the software you re-market and their users worldwide for Novell's sole commercial benefit."

"You chose the GPL, you read the license, you know what you are getting yourself into with patents. If your application violates the patent then you charge a royalty, if it doesn't then distribute away for free. If someone could explain to me why Novell shouldn't go for protection on the issue that would great. I'm just not understanding what the real problem is."

There are those in the "community" that believe anything to do with Microsoft is evil. If this agreement would have been made with any other entity they would not see a problem. Basically there is no real problem but the OSS pundits themselves.